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Andrea Dovizioso waiting on Ducati upgrades

Published:
23 April 2013

Andrea Dovizioso says all he can do is be patient and push at 100% while waiting for a series of upgrades to be rolled out by Ducati’s factory MotoGP squad later in the season.

Small updates for the Desmosedici GP13 machine might be forthcoming at the French Grand Prix in Le Mans next month but bigger changes to try and solve a long-standing understeer issue, which is the main priority for the Bologna factory’s engineering group to eradicate, won't be available until later in 2013.

There has been speculation that Ducati will roll out a radical new bike at a Monday test session immediately after the Catalunya race in Barcelona in mid-June.

But Dovizioso told MCN during the inaugural Circuit of the Americas (COTA) race in Texas that he no fixed time frame when significant tweaks would be unveiled.

The Italian has finished seventh in the opening two races of the season and in both has been losing about a second a lap, though at COTA he was comfortably the fastest Ducati and beat Alvaro Bautista’s Honda too.

But on when major upgrades will be ready to evaluate on the GP13 he told MCN: “I don’t know exactly because there are a lot of new parts and each of them you need different time to prepare. We expect something big in the middle of the season but nothing is fixed because they are working day and night to give us the new parts as soon as they can.”

Dovizioso though conceded that he expects to continue battling just outside of the top six while the Desmosedici remains in its current guise.

He added: “We know this is the situation and I have to try and adapt to manage that. But Ducati has tried everything with this bike in terms of set-up, so we don’t have to find something special. But we have to wait for the new parts because the bike is this one."